I believe this is the first time I have added an addendum to an already-published article. But the National Review’s decision to devote an entire issue to attacking Mr. Trump underscores the point I was striving to make in my original article. That point was that the Republican establishment has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism and is fully owned and operated by three groups of people: Interventionists, Neoconservatives, and Israel-Firsters. (NB: These three terms may well be synonyms.)
These three groups are all terrified that, if elected, Trump:
- Will root out the graft, corruption, and waste that they — with the Democratic establishment — have made an acceptable lifestyle for anyone who is in any way involved with the national government. Both establishments are terrified that if Trump is elected they will no longer be “above the law” and will be investigated for their financial dealings, as well as for their criminal negligence in failing to protect and defend the republic.
- Will be a non-interventionist and so will refuse to ask for a declaration of war unless the United States is attacked, or America’s genuine, life-or-death national interests are indisputably at immediate risk. If Trump is elected, they fear, there will be no more foreign-policy goals that are airy and always fatal abstractions; that is, there will be no more dead and maimed Marines and soldiers in foreign wars fought — and always lost — for freedom, democracy, human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, or any other abstract idea that should never have any place in the republic’s foreign policy.
- Will not tolerate the insane bromide that all nations have a “right to exist” as the basis for U.S. foreign policy. Trump, based on what he has said, knows that this idea is a nonsense. Indeed, Trump seems to be running for president because he recognizes the fact that no nation — including the United States — has a right to exist, and that the Republican and Democratic establishments have driven America to the verge of economic collapse, military exhaustion, the tyranny of one-man rule, demographic suicide, bloody civil unrest, and disunion. The National Review and the Republican and Democratic establishments seem not to care about these things, but they are ready to kill the United States so long as they can maintain the mad and ahistorical fiction that all nations have a “right to exist,” a lie which they really apply to only one nation, and then only so they can keep raking in massive financial and media contributions from disloyal U.S.-citizens and their organizations.
- Will begin to give working, blue-collar, law abiding, and tax-paying Americans and their families — those of all races, creeds, educational achievements, and political views — renewed confidence that their opinions, material ambitions, and religious liberty matter most in governing the republic and providing for its survival, and that the age of government by elitist, Ivy League-educated, pro-authoritarian, always wrong “experts” is going to be ended. They also fear that Trump will start to re-teach the citizenry the Founders’ key bequest to Americans, which is that ensuring the survival of so fragile a commodity as liberty at home is unending and full-time work for all Americans, and that unnecessary interventions and wars abroad in the name of that commodity will only yield lost wars, no new republics, U.S. bankruptcy, and less liberty in the United States.
Mr. Trump hopefully is correct that the National Review is a “dying” magazine, but, before it succumbs, he ought to send its editors a thank-you note for publishing their anti-Trump issue, which can do him nothing but good with the mass of Americans who are working — or want to work — and who passionately care about the future well-being of their families, country, and liberty. Trump might also say a prayer that more agents of foreign powers — like the National Review — get off the dime and publish anti-Trump issues. What are you waiting for Commentary, Weekly Standard, Foreign Affairs, New York Times, etc., etc., etc.?
